R2880 - can't maintain a good nozzle check

InkjetMall Customer Support Printer Maintenance & Cartridges
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21

Sorry - coming in late to this on a Sunday. But, the black channel indicates a dirty head. Cyan as well. This would not come from humidity but rather possibly a dirty capping station, over saturated pads, dirty or worn wiper blade, in general an unclean cleaning station that is foaming and not draining well and the bubbles of foam are probably adhering to the print head after the final wipe. Your nozzles are mis-directed in many cases. Almost looks like electrical. Without having to go back through all of your experience - have you cleaned the capping station of this printer and the wiper blade? Did you inspect the wiper blade> is it pitted or worn? They are cheap to replace. Are you the person with the draining 2880 carts? If so - then the capping station may be wicking them.

In any event - your black is definitely a pattern of a dirty print head or a too wet print head from the cleaning station. Look at the lines as they are formed irregularly. As the print head moves it fires a few drops out each nozzle. This is happening in micro seconds and in the time it takes to shoot the ink out it is bending. This is usually indicated by two things: 1) electrical 2) dirty print head (thin film of ink still smeared on the head instead of it being wiped clean by the squeegee wiper blade). Electrical would be also spraying ink where it is not intended (like in the margins).

Magenta bleeding into Yellow indicates the capping station seal is leaking and the Yellow is sucking up the magenta rather than the being pulled down into the capping station. This is very common on a roland printer and indicates time to replace the capping station. The rolands are powered by six individual epson heads and six individual capping stations. Each head has two different colors in it. When one sucks up the other color you change the capping station ($12) and back in the race. But you can actually watch the head cleaning on a roland and see whether it is foaming. On the Epson they keep that under the plastic and hard to get an eyeball on it. On the rolands you replace the wiper blades every liter or so. They pop out and you are directed to replace them. The principle is the same - keeping the epson print heads wiped clean. Any ink film will misdirect the ink or prevent it from being ejected. Likewise with too little or too much humidity drying the orifices or allowing them to be too wet. But yours looks like typical capping station.

When a printer is used over a long period of time the capping station may not drain so easily because of what is beneath the pad and the tubing that goes to the waste pads at the bottom of the printer. That needs to drain nearly instantly as it would with a new printer. Otherwise it foams when it sucks through the print head. When the head moves into position to get wiped by the wiper blade it does not fully clear the capping station foamy bubbles and they adhere as the final step. So the wiper blade is not able to do its mission.

In your case, it might be worth it to really clean the pad and the drain tubes. You may have some gunk buildup over time.

Not certain what else you can do. If you are thinking OEM - go ahead and buy a set of carts and use them. If the problem is remaining - clean your printer or service and replace the cleaning area.

If the problem goes away - try a different set of cartridges with the ConeColor. Your carts could be draining but the R2880 is a good machine and the cartridges we sell are what I use at the workshops in Santa Fe as well as for ink testing in R&D. We run 5 R2880s at the Santa Fe workshop. They are a little slow to come up after sitting for five months - but we use the heck out of them running about 50 sets of cartridges over 5 days. We maintain the capping station and wiper blades as part of the workshop demonstrating printer maintenance. So they get cleaned properly twice a year.

Another suggestions: you should be able to put a few drops of PiezoFlush on the pads in the cleaning station and watch it swell just for a second and then drain. If it swells but drains very slowly - then dig deeper into the cleaning station and get to the tubing. The part that drains into the tube or the tube itself may also be preventing the movement of the sucked out ink down to the waste pads or out into the bottle if you are using an external waste bottle.

But magenta into the yellow is a dead give away that there is a problem in your capping station during cleaning. You got to deal with that.

Also if all of this has already been suggested to you and you have done all of this - you may have reassembled the capping station and it is slightly raised so as the normal wet swelling of it during a clean cycle is reaching the print head.

Hope I do not feel like an idiot and read back and see that you have been through all of this alreadyā€¦ so I wonā€™t. I think the suggestions I am making are valid for what you are describing as well as the image you just posted. Will check in later today to see for a reply.

best,

Jon

22

Thanks Jon. Itā€™s early hours of the morning here and I need to get to bed. Iā€™ll read this in detail in the morning. But I would say that there has been a long history with this printer, as the forum trail indicates. You seem to raise some new issues that I donā€™t recall Dana raising. Iā€™ll reply further when awake.

p.s. Ok, I did have a quick read. Iā€™ve done most of these things. Many times. Iā€™ve poured gallons of piezoflush into this machine through quite a few cleanings. The wiper blade seems pristine. Iā€™ve had the capping station clean enough to eat your dinner off multiple times. Thereā€™s no problem pouring flush or distilled water into the capping station and watching it drain, and it drains without a problem during cleans. Thereā€™s no sign of foaming that I can see during head cleans, although itā€™s hard to see clearly, even with a bright torch. After each time I get this problem, and there have been plenty recently, Iā€™ve had the printer cleaner than when it let the factory before I try yet again. I think I need to give you more of the history in a short form to help you target your advice.

23

If i do make new suggestions, it is only because I am recently dealing with similar issue as you on a Roland. Or you are revealing more symptoms that I noticed as a simple indication of the capping station?

The Roland is a printer that allows access to the user to perform all the necessary maintenance of Epson print heads. It even moves the head over to a little chamber under which you can wipe it clean with these sponge brushes Roland provides. By doing so, it promotes a health seal with the capping station. They recommend it as a daily routine. It is the same as an Epson printer in most ways using similar parts, etc. Epson does not make any maintenance suggestions to its customers in order to give the impression that the printer is maintenance free. They are not. They require lots of preventative care in order to get the best out of them.

When we see professional exhibitions in NYC we often freak out at what we see. Dana and I saw enormous Nick Brandtā€™s at a prestigious gallery in Chelsea district and Dana spotted out to me the micro banding from about 4 or 5 feet! You would think, right? But, no. Not everyone is aware until they actually see it and then it stands out like a sore thumb. These prints were selling for more than $10,000 and they could have been better printed. I was looking at them from about 10 feet away and they are like six feet high and four feet wide. But, when you get close to them the banding interfered.

24

Not to derail this completely, but I have a similar story, showing how the ā€œuninitiatedā€ can completely miss these things.
I take my printers on the road to conventions. I let one of my associates queue up print jobs after a brief introduction, and all seemed well. I went away for a while and came back to find that VM had completely seized and every print for the past 20 minutes had this nasty cyan cast. They simply didnā€™t notice. Needless to say, I kinda flipped out. Later that day, PK started banding and again they didnā€™t notice. After that, I made sure I checked up on them repeatedly :wink: They had also been giving those prints out, and there were few complaints. So yes. Many people donā€™t notice these things.

Brian: Do your flush carts ever drain? If not, try putting ink in them and see what happens. (I know thatā€™s not suggested.) Remind us how old the printer is?

25

Jon, I donā€™t want to sound unappreciative of your comments. While Dana is the guru in these matters, itā€™s good to get another view that might pick up things that we missed, but there is a history. So I will try and briefly summarise. Iā€™ve heard of Roland, but have no first hand knowledge.

  1. I used to print a lot of colour some years ago, but mostly now I print B&W using K7 on an R1900. But I do print a small amount of colour, and itā€™s nice to be able to do so, but mostly low volume and intermittent. I was looking for a new printer last year, as my 2100 had age-related problems, and my R2400 has never behaved well with refillables (see here). So you and Dana and discussed whether I might buy an R3000 (here).

  2. I concluded that I should try and avoid a printer with ink lines if at all possible, and esp for colour work. So I bought a second-hand R2880 at the beginning of Sept 2014, partly encouraged by you and Dana, but it was my decision. This is always a gamble, but it appeared to be in very good condition, the WIC reset utility reported only modest usage and that the waste ink counters were under 20%. The OEM nozzle check was good I donā€™t know the precise age of the printer, but they havenā€™t been sold new for several years, perhaps three.

  3. I had a terrible time getting it to work with fresh IJM carts and ConeColor ink - carts draining, cross channel bleeding like the nozzle check I just posted only worse. Details here. I eventually succeed, briefly. Itā€™s not clear what the initial problem was. There may have been some user error in filling the carts (my other printers havenā€™t been overly sensitive to filling technique, but this one seems to be), but thereā€™s strong evidence that the M cart was faulty as it leaked when out of the printer, despite being new.

  4. After multiple cleanings and attempts and swapping some carts I was eventually able to print for a short time, but where this thread started, I wasnā€™t able to keep a good nozzle check for long, like only a couple of days if that. Same symptoms, sometimes I just get cross-channel bleeding, and sometimes I also find that carts have drained when just sitting.

  5. There are a standard series of IJM suggestions - clean the printer, fill the carts correctly, maintain humidity. Iā€™ve done the first two many times and Iā€™m not convinced that humidity is an issue here over the period that Iā€™ve had these struggles. My piezo R1900 in the same studio has mostly behaved perfectly.

  6. Speaking of the R1900, during this process I switched from SE to neutral inks, which meant putting in brand new carts for shades 2,3,4,5. I started having the same problems. Itā€™s harder to see whatā€™s going on with piezo, since itā€™s all shades of grey, but it was pretty much the same. See #5 & #8 in this thread. I pretty much conclusively proved that the shade 2 & 3 brand new carts were faulty. #12 in this thread reports the resolution and that printer is now behaving impeccably.

  7. So I returned to the R2880, thinking that perhaps I had yet another faulty new cart. Take the flush carts out, another thorough printer clean, and same problems. I was watching carefully and as I suspected the problems seemed to emanate from the PK channel, which drained completely rather quickly. So I replaced the PK chart and went round the dance floor one more time. This time it worked and stayed that way. See #13.

  8. But it only stayed that way for 11-12 days. As per #20 in this thread that you responded to, history started to repeat itself.

As someone else said, Iā€™ve been very patient and thorough, but Iā€™ve just about had enough. Iā€™ve compared the R1900 & R2880 very carefully, and I canā€™t see anything that would explain the different behaviour. The wiper blades in both are pristine after cleaning. Both capping stations look pretty much perfect after theyā€™ve been cleaned. The capping station seals seem pristine. Both have had the Dana C cleaning routine. So why the difference? I really thought I had narrowed it down to faulty new carts, and perhaps that added to my problems, but now Iā€™m not so sure that thatā€™s all it is.

Regarding your other suggestions and comments:
. The PK channel did indicate misfiring, but I managed to clear that just with purge patterns and waiting. I havenā€™t bothered to post all the nozzle checks.
. Am I the person with leaking 2880 carts? There are several of us here at the moment, although one person clearly has an electrical fault. Iā€™ve been having problems the longest.
. As I said in my holding reply, the capping station has been cleaned and drains well. Iā€™ve not disassembled it. It looks ok to me, esp compared to the R1900. That doesnā€™t mean that there isnā€™t a problem with it, but not one that I can detect and not one that I can see that Iā€™ve caused.
. Try more carts? Well I could. I ordered four sets and only have on complete set left unused. I ordered new inks and have gone through a reasonable amount, esp PK, without a lot to show for it.

Iā€™ll stop now. I think I have to try OEM for a while now and see what happens. After all, if there is a printer problem then it should also occur with OEM.

26

This is a sore point with me. Which is better, a powerful image poor printed / reproduced, or a weak image well printed? Thatā€™s not much of a choice, but the sore point is that people seem insensitive to printing / reproduction quality. People who place some emphasis on it risk being branded as technicians rather than artists. Was it always thus, or is this a feature of the modern age, where we are bombarded with low-grade images and well-produced clichĆ©s.

Trust Dana to spot it!

Perhaps the forum moderators could split this discussion off into a separate thread in a more appropriate part of the forum.

27

R2880 is a very popular model for Piezo and especially digital negative, and we sell a lot of cart sets, and we are still on the same manufacturing run. So nothing has changed on our side.

Did you know the owner of this printer when you bought it or do you know why he sold it?

28

No and not really. Everyone who sells something has a story. With printers, it tends to be that they got tired of printing and tired of handing over money to Epson. Perhaps also tired of clogs if they donā€™t print often, but they wonā€™t say that.

Even Dana will concede that occasional manufacturing defects happen, and my recent experience strongly indicates that Iā€™ve at least had a few.

I know what youā€™re saying. My wife says the same. Itā€™s why the time has come to try OEM, at least for a while.

29

Let us know about the OEM carts - although the OEM carts have this patented little tiny network of lines that form the venting. The China made carts have a hole (literally). So its hard to get an OEM cart to drain - very hard. But, its not difficult to get a China cart to drain. The problem is figuring out why its draining.

Youā€™ve been through 4 sets of carts and the same problem is just very, odd. Not certain how we can fix this issue. Canā€™t send you a set of carts as it will just continue. Too bad you do not have another R2880 to test. The OEM carts test is not so apples to apples because of their micro venting.

Let me ask if you have sent a set of these carts to us for us to run on one or more of our R2880s? If not - can you drain and plug them back up as well as you can and pop em in a ziplock and send to us. Weā€™ll replace them if they do not work. But, if they do work, then it well may turn out that you canā€™t use refill carts on your printer.

Jon

30

[QUOTE=Brian_S;6352]This is a sore point with me. Which is better, a powerful image poor printed / reproduced, or a weak image well printed? Thatā€™s not much of a choice, but the sore point is that people seem insensitive to printing / reproduction quality. People who place some emphasis on it risk being branded as technicians rather than artists. Was it always thus, or is this a feature of the modern age, where we are bombarded with low-grade images and well-produced clichĆ©s.

Trust Dana to spot it!

Perhaps the forum moderators could split this discussion off into a separate thread in a more appropriate part of the forum.[/QUOTE]

What would you call the thread? I am a moderator - and can move it!

Dana has the most experience in the company with these technical matters and never ever gives up on anyone. Sheā€™s been here working on Epson printerā€™s since I think the 1160 was our most popular model. Sometimes during the weekend I butt in to see if I can help anyone with something urgent. Hence my butting in on this oneā€¦

31

We seem to be simultaneously posting at the moment.

I understand only too well about the differences between OEM and China carts. See my lessons from the past 9 years:
http://www.inkjetmall.com/tech/showthread.php?1023-The-lessons-I-ve-learnt-from-using-desktop-refillables-over-9-years

Iā€™ve only been through three sets of carts in the R2880. I have one set unused still. I had in mind to send the ones that Iā€™m fairly sure are faulty back to you for precisely this reason, but was waiting until I was sure what was going on with the R2880.

However I was only going to send back individual carts. Moreover, because the R1900 and R2880 use the same carts with different chips, I often grab a different new cart to swap in and swap the chips. So I was only going to send the four that I know are faulty and without chips. However I guess I could drain and send the current set. That would include the PK that drained badly a few weeks ago, and the R2880 MK cart that Iā€™m current using in that slot with a PK chip. I could even swap the chips back.

Yes, but thereā€™s only one of her and with her new family she only works part-time and the number of people posting problems seems to be proliferating. So it can be days between replies, esp for those of us sleeping when sheā€™s working. Not a complain, just an observation. I am conscious that itā€™s free support.

Why is print quality not better appreciated by artists and the public?

32

Dana is actually full time, and has been full-time since just a few weeks after her delivery. Dana and baby have been at InkjetMall in the R&D room and also a crib down in the studio. :slight_smile:

Anyways - please send us the carts that you believe are defective. Let us test them in one of our R2880s. If they are defective - we will replace them and make good on the inks that you wasted. No use torturing yourself over them. You already have had additional sets of carts - so its time to try something new. Just pop em in a ziplock and send them. We can test them and let you know if they work or not in our R2880. If they do work in our printer - then either you canā€™t run refill carts or you bought someone elseā€™s troubles.

Talking about print quality, check this: http://www.inkjetmall.com/wordpress/photography/james-nachtwey/

33

Will do.

So are you employing SuperWoman or WonderWoman or a combination of both?

34

Dana is SuperWoman, WonderWoman, and SuperMom. She has two of the best kids on the planet.

35

I have thought about this for more than 2 minutes. It seems to me that one option is a hybrid approach. If it is the case that there are one or two channels that wonā€™t work with refillables, and if I can isolate them, then I could use OEM in just those channels. So maybe I will keep the set that I have been using for the moment and only initially send back the carts that Iā€™m fairly sure are faulty. I may sent the current set later if the hybrid approach doesnā€™t work.

I will wait to hear from Dana whether sending back 4 carts some without chips is of any use, as in at least 2 / 4 cases the chips are in use on other carts. Two are R1900 and two are R2880. I may include JeffGā€™s.

Of course another approach is a new print head and cartridge bay assembly, assuming thatā€™s where any incompatibility lies, rather than the capping station. Not a cheap option, but Iā€™ve seen the videos and I reckon I could do it myself. I am keen to avoid ink lines. But perhaps OEM would be a cheaper option overall if it came to that.

What a run of back luck Iā€™ve had with colour printers. :frowning:

36

Hi Brian~

Sorry for not responding sooner, I was teaching all day on Friday, and again for the next two days, so donā€™t have time to read thru the entire thread, but after quickly skimming thru will have Kelly send you information to return carts to us for testing. I thought you were having problems with more than two R2880 cartsā€¦ (?)
Yes, you can send them to us without chips attached, and weā€™ll attach chips before testing them in our printers.

We have been doing more testing with R2880 carts, even filling a full set with CCP PK, but have not been able to duplicate your results, so are interested to test the specific carts youā€™ve been having problems with.

If the carts work well in our printer, then it may be as Jon explained difference in hardware, and what your printer can handle. Our refill carts have a different air venting system than the OEM carts, and that may be a factor (?) We will know a lot more after testing your carts in our printers (we have both a very old + abused R2880, and a newer/refurbished one).

We will be in touch with more information after testing your carts, and be able to move forward from there to get you happily printing.

Warmly~ Dana :slight_smile:

37

Thanks Dana. Whether you can get get me happily printing with this particular printer remains to be seen.

Iā€™ve had a lot of problems with this printer, as you know, but I can only definitely isolate a couple of R2880 carts as strong candidates for being declared faulty. In my experience it only takes one to leak and the problems quickly spread to other channels, so isolating the faulty one can be a challenge. There were also two faulty R1900 carts, which is partly why this thread is long and complex. Effectively the same carts and printer.

If Iā€™m going to run OEM at least for a while, can I ask a question? Which printers have OEM carts that are country-specific or country-locked? Iā€™m fairly sure that the R14x0 series does, but I donā€™t think the other desktop printers do, do they? So I could import some, as local prices here are high, just as for most camera / photo gear.

P.s. Given that there are several of us here with almost identical problems, I had suspected faulty carts. JMiller is having almost identical problems, and there are one or two others as well. But I am starting to wonder if there might have been a batch of print heads / cartridge bay assemblies that had the PK ink nozzle / nipple slightly out of spec. Not by so much that the OEM carts wonā€™t work, since theyā€™re designed to be more tolerant. But by enough that refillables wonā€™t work. The fit isnā€™t tight enough and air gets in and they leak. This would explain why itā€™s PK that weā€™re all having problems with.

38

I would like to see the results of the testing, so I hope you make them public here. :slight_smile:
As a recent buyer of a refurb R2880, Iā€™d like to know what I might be facing in the future.
A thought about the venting thing: I know the Epson carts have that one-way valve thing, which probably helps keep ink in when not in use. I did some detailed tracing of the vent lines in the refillables and there is plenty of room for possible leaks in that network. But the plastic film seems well secured, so itā€™s doubtful that thereā€™s a problem there. shrugā€¦

Also, the recent posts in this thread gave me warm fuzzies! Perfect in the lead up to Saturday. Splitting / creating a new thread for discussion about ā€œprofessionalā€ print quality would be something I would definitely contribute to.

39

tjncooke - there was one question of yours back in #25 that I didnā€™t answer, which is do the flush carts drain? No, not that I can see. A slow leak might be hard to spot given how light the dye is in flush, and that all the channels are the same, but as far as I can see, no. Which I agree is puzzling, but Iā€™ve assumed that ink and flush must be sufficiently different. Itā€™s not the first printer that Iā€™ve had this experience with.

I would like Dana to respond to #37 when she has time, and in order that she doesnā€™t get lost in this thread again can I suggest that we let it rest until she does? Thanks.

40

I am one of the others who is having very similar problems. We could compare printer serial numbers, perhaps that would be of use in tracking down printer head manufacturing problems. My Epson R2880 printer serial number is KFFY0097827.

Dan